I found that WiFi is draining too much battery power on my laptop.
The system has Linux Mint 14 (32 bit)
and runs with its default kernel, 3.5.0-17-generic
. The driver in use is ath9k
and runs on Intel i3 processor
.
It takes just 30 minutes to drain a fully charged battery.
By checking iwconfig details, I can tell that Power Management
is turned on.
Driver and device details:
@mintbox ~ $ sudo lsmod | grep -i ath
[sudo] password for :
ath9k 116549 0
mac80211 461161 1 ath9k
ath9k_common 13783 1 ath9k
ath9k_hw 376155 2 ath9k,ath9k_common
ath 19187 3 ath9k,ath9k_common,ath9k_hw
cfg80211 175375 3 ath9k,mac80211,ath
@mintbox ~ $
@mintbox ~ $ lspci -vvv | grep -A 10 Wireless
02:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. T77H126.00 802.11bgn Wireless Half-size Mini PCIe Card
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
Region 0: Memory at e7a00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: ath9k
Kernel modules: ath9k
@mintbox ~ $
I understand that my laptop will use more power with WiFi, but I am looking for suggestions on tweaks that can help, like putting WiFi in stand by when not in use. I can compromise on network speed to an extent.